Increasingly, people generate data and metadata across multiple computing devices and multiple hosted services. For example, during the course of a single day, a person may use a laptop computer, desktop computer, tablet computer, and smartphone in order to view and edit files, e-mails, or other data objects. As another example, a person may use hosted solutions such as Facebook, Gmail, Google Docs, and salesforce.com to communicate with others and conduct work. A person may not be able to access the files and information they need readily from a single interface, since the files are scattered across multiple computing devices and hosted sites. Moreover, conventional information management systems are often focused on organizing, protecting, and recovering the data from fixed computing devices, such as servers or desktop computers. As a result, a person's hosted data and mobile data may be scattered outside of the purview of conventional information management systems and that data will therefore not be backed up or otherwise actively managed. Thus, in the event that a mobile device is lost or broken or a hosted service has a service disruption, there is a risk that a person's critical data may be lost, without any way to recover it.
The need exists for systems and methods that overcome the above problems, as well as systems and methods that provide additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and methods and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems and methods will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following detailed description.